This week I hope to bring to you, my 5 or 6 people audience, some stories/lessons I learned. I do this mostly for myself, for the further processing of my condition, I decided it is better to be shared rather than just written in my little journal.
1. AUTHENTICITY
In Peru, Lima, I struggle with authenticity. I struggle with a mega church. I struggle with my duties as a leader to set an example. I struggle with door to door evangelism, cute skits in the park, and inserting your name into a prewritten prayer. I struggle with seeing so many lovely people caught up in duty. I struggle with the compromise of my concious to please people. I struggle with people who love drama. I struggle with the my duties as a guest, the giving up of my freedoms, feeling stuck, and just trying to stick it out. I struggle with playing the role.
As a leader, as a role model, as a member of a team that was assigned for 5 weeks to a blessed church in the slums of Lima Peru, I had many responsibilities. One of them being drawing diamonds and butterflys on my cheeks and wearing giant brightly colored plastic overalls. On one such occasion I found myself in this very outfit in a overly dangerous park dancing ridiculously about a crowd of people I barely knew anything about the culture of. On this same occasion, after the ridiculous cartwheels, cute skits, lollipops, overly pepped songs about Jesus, and just before the great prayer to change all forever, I was asked to share the “substance”the meat and potatoes amongst the gumdrops and other sugary delights already given. I was asked to share my faith, to give testimony in the hopes of persuasion. And so, a brightly colored clown hesitently stepped foreward out of his role as entertainer and used religious words as cunning as could be arranged to a audience that did not even understand his own language. Only my makeup was still smiling as I walked behind the bleachers shamed by the compromise of my concious, and the empty speech that inspired little. Authenticity might have been sitting down with one of those people that saw a clown with foreign words tell them how to live, sitting down and asking them instead “how” they live. Authenticity might have been refusing to fall line with a duty that breaks your heart. Authenticity might have been not doing a show at all. Authenticity isn’t something a clown is usually good at. I guess I filled my role beautifully and horriflically.
“Our world needs us to let them be who they are, and we need to be who we are with them.” Roger
its a priviledge.
I woke up and stared into the dimly lit woven grass above me, alone. I rolled over, eventually up, and creeked the door open. Even the pre-sunrise haze caused a delay in my pupils shrinking until I met eyes with the chinese chicken. I am in Africa, not china. Both me and the black, tall chicken are strangers in this land. Perhaps this common thread of comradary is what he seeks, that or the leftovers from my last nights dinner. The serenity overwhelmed me, this playground filled with bopping little african heads for few hours each day fell a break in the silence only to the steps of the chicken. Moving foreward with confidence and backwards in cowardence almost in the same moment. I grabbed my bible, a pen, paper and some sandals and plotted my way down the narrow dirt path carved by little feet amongst the vicious white tipped daggers growing from nearly every bush plant. I journeyed to the tallest structure I could beset my feet upon, a 5 foot playground platform. Pausing to take in the loudness of silence, et is the kind even your thoughts seem to overpower. Each was clear uncontended by the happenings found by the other senses. I spoke out. I felt it right. I figured someone, something would whisper back. “God, I want to do something right now.” I waited for my audience to prepare itself. “I want to fully set aside myself, my history, my future, my body, my mind, my attitude, what I think I know and what I don’t know, and just be before you.” pause for reaction. “I just want a taste of what it is like to live without restraint, fully free.” A beautiful voice answered…a womens voice, and it sang with such grace, the rythem of a pure african voice. I looked about, and found no vessel for the voice, I saw little more than the bushy trees and the occasional goat. I felt the urging to get up, to advance, to run, to find the voice…but I hesitated, and my brain found favor in the waiting moments, full of doubt. Like standing atop a cliff about to jump, others had jumped, water below, deep water, but the longer you stand, the longer you wait, the more reasons your brain finds to restrain. “I probably don’t know this person, what if it is the people I chased from the water tank last night, what would I say, who could…” nothingness interupts me. The returned silence halts my thoughts and I slouch down knowing that I had missed my oppurtunity, that I had not failed the most simple of tests. Did I really think it would be that easy, that I wouldn’t have to do my part? Obedience may lead you to the illogical, but illogical is exactly what God is.
Come back to me sweet voice.
my greatest challenge, my cheeziest blog
At the end of our first two weeks of ministry in the mountain town of Alguilar Mexico I stood up around a candlelit group of tables grouped longways together like the last supper to give report of my teams doings. While others talked of miracles and breakthroughs, I proposed that my team was simply finding ways to love each other. Little did I know at the time, this would be the daunting task that never left my team. This is the story of our greatest bout at love that year…Ginger.
The famed “ginger question” began on our very first official team night, where Ginger swung her feet off the roof we poised excitingly upon. A group of individuals came together here with fresh dreams of a years worth of adventure and then Ginger said some of the most devastating words I could have heard at that time in my life. “I don’t know what I believe or if I believe in God right now.” Now I don’t know if she had been misinformed, but we were on day 1 of a 11 month missions journey that I would have thought would have some prerequisites, such as buying into, at least a little bit, the whole “God” thing. Myself and my team, though shocked, found innocent hope that she would find breakthrough. As team leader, I naively asked her to take the night off in hopes of everything being fixed by the marrow.
This matter was apparently deeper than we had thought though, and the Ginger “situation” began to be seen as a Ginger “problem” as time wore on. My team believed strongly, that in order to be successful as a team, we needed to be one cohesive unit. Sounds appropriate. Though this model may work for finishing a group science report in high school, our group dynamics were quite a bit more…dynamic. In short, what basic freedoms we find in american individuality are quickly lost in this group setting. Space, money, time, ambitions and generally how you would do things by yourself are pooled into one big joint marriage that none of us could walk away from. One by one, we were offended in some way by Ginger’s (and eachothers!) actions and attitude and one by one we lost hope and patience. Even Ginger herself seemed to have lost hope and the subtle light hearted attempts of being a part of the team, of this journey became fewer and fewer. The Ginger “question” may have started out, “How can we love her”, but was quickly becoming “How can we end her”.
My personal breaking point came in the middle of the fourth month where I had secured a day of rest for my team away from the hardships of some of the most involved ministry all year. We were to go to the monkey island park on the following day and I announced it to the glee of most on my team during a quick meeting after a service. Most. Ginger approached me immediatly after we dispearsed and asked if she could use our day off go to town alone. Combined with the stresses I was under at that location and ministry, and the apparent abuse of the favor for my team members, suddenly enraged, I lay loose my tongue and began to dump the aggressions I had against her in one quick rap. Ginger went to the monkey park the next day.
You know how a lot of people want to impeach Bush, but don’t really know how. That was our situation. Some took it up with leadership on thier own, others with Ginger herself, but all were found with open mouths during our Peruvian debrief, four months into the trip, 4 months of unwillingness, of attitude, of a lack of any sign of things getting better in her, patience had gone bald, and we were provided an outlet for it. Though she never will admit to being hurt by our words all this time, I don’t believe she went unscathed. (It seemed everybody was put through at least some part of the similiar situation as we certainly saw eachothers bad sides at some point.)
A few days later, I came to a realization during a conversation with a good friend (jimmy), that blew my mind and completely changed my perspective on the “ginger question”. Now I don’t remember what Jimmy said totally, but I found one little insight in it. Is she worth it? Is ginger, seeing ginger be ginger, be extroardinary, be successful, find her own love and ambition, was it worth my time, my energy, my life. I had to answer yes, why else am I on this journey? I wanted to find passion and ways to love people and God and why not start with the people that I am gonna be living with anyways. Make the trip a whole lot smoother if anything! So I went to find all those stupid verses in the bible, Love is kindness, is respect… that is always used in weddings, the love your god, then your neighbor, and your enemy too verse. Looked past the cheeziness, and found truth in my then situations. I then realized that I was failing ginger, and realized that I was gonna have to make some sacrifices, more sacrifices that is, to actively do my teamates right.
Did I get it right? no! I continued to make mistakes and continued failing people, friends and enemy’s. But I was working at it, and I am better at it now than ever in my life.
Worldy love only goes as far as the persons of your choice, God’s love goes into your enemies and neighbors and all.
your awesome ging.
(just so everybody knows, ginger did return to her self soon after we hit rock bottom with her and became a great team member and even later taking many of my leadership responsibilities over our team)
how exciting!
Green and red bits hung on the corners of my mouth. Its christmas eve. Millions of children around the globe have sugarless sugar-rushes in anticipation of the hours ahead. Hours of paper ripped to shreds, torn to reveal boxes that would be soon thrown away, boxes containing painted plastic shaped to the desired figure to enthrall the child’s imagination, plastic that would be piled a month later onto last years plastic. I wasn’t finding release in plastic though, I found it in porcelin. Two days before my great adventure, two days where most would find distraction from work and the daily routine. I found little distraction from my past and immediate future and the ideas that abounded from both brought me here, to the smallest room in the house, where waste is disposed of and cleanliness achieved. I hurled in fear of the future, I puked in rememberence of my past, and the joys of christmas eve came and went without me.
Breaking life’s patterns isn’t always the prettiest of process’. I suppose this is what makes it so hard sometimes. In the months leading up to the World Race and unfortunely quite often in the first few months of the trip, I had to deal seriously with my life failures. I wished to approach this journey and the oppurtunities it presented with open arms, a clear mind, and a patient heart. I was tired of complaining about the flaws I found in the christian church. I was tired of thinking my opinions as the end all. I was tired of having one thing erk me about someone or some institution and giving up on it. I was tired of being pissed at God when he didn’t pay attention to me. I was tired of wanting to be right.
These were my patterns and habits I found inside of me that sickened me and I found myself in the end having to physically puke them out draped in eggnog and mourning. But I found the next day was about birth and hope of redemption. And a journey soon ahead that would breed both.
We suck at it
I often recall finding myself in a bind along the world race. It is a easy hole to fall into, with language, culture, and often an unawareness of your surroundings dragging you into a pitiful situation. Luckily somebody would be there to lift up a confused soul quite often. And I am left with the wonderings of what could have happened. And the redeeming story of man helping man emerges despite my deepest doubts they would not. Whether it be the accompany of a silent chinese angel, the slaughter of a mozambique goat for our arrival, the giving up of beds for weeks in peru, or the simple walking me home I found hospitality that I would never think of giving.
I equipped my usual little green bag early that morning, with painting supplies, a bit of water, candy, spoon, passport, and journal. I set off for the 10 mile bike ride to the gate of the ancient city of Angkor Wat. I travelled alone in hopes of reflecting on this ancient masterpiece without interruption. I would later find myself to be the interruption for others. Upon reaching the gate I found that I had little money more on me than the entrance fee. One more dollar and one less spoon would have helped. I made the decision to chance it for the day, though I knew I would have to be creative with water and food as to not waste my precious day off having to ride back and forth between home and here. Luckily I had a big breakfast.
eric hansons picture with his monk friends
Probably not big enough though. Without worry, I went from ruin to ruin painting about, becoming a spectacle of my own. Somewhere out there, in europe, japan, and america among others, there are pictures of me leaning up against a ancient faced pillar, paint brush in hand. Distracted from my folly by the one of the greatest marvels I’ve ever witnessed I strode on happily. Eventually however; the intense humidity and heat ran my water reserves low and I spent the equivalent of 50 of my 60 cents on a bottle of refreshness. Soon after I found hunger pains starting to slow my riding and I cautiously stopped by an empty restaurant to bargain for some rations. I looked over the menu top to bottom, curries for only 2 dollars, pad thai for even cheaper, shame. I had no choice but to beg and I equipped my pennies with a look of desperation. I am guessing this mostly confused her, as it takes nearly 20 american dollars to get into this place in the first place. A white begger here must be as rare as a khmai begger at the super bowl. Nonetheless she showed compassion after I am sure doubting my poor condition and served me a bowl of white rice with a glass of water. Elated and hungry I quickly ate to return to my journey of discovery.
With little light left I gently strode back towards the gate. I had ran out of water, but was still strolling along. I stopped at one more ruin and walked through unimpressed with its mediocre size. I little khmai vendor girl walked my every step behind speaking in perfect english, then spanish. She proceeded to whoop me in U.S. and world capitals trivia, I began to make up countries and say ridiculous capital names. “Whats the capital of pootasia?” “Its a real country, tiny in the pacific, I swear.” We had some good laughs and went back and forth, as I curiously asked question after question into the lives of this little girl. It was rare to find a child here with perfect english, but this place was full of them and soon I had 15 little vendor girls all around me, trying to sell me bracelets, jade monkeys, scarves and various womens clothes. I loved the attention in near pure English, though it was the same annoying vendors spleels. I traded one of my paintings to the original girl for water and decided it was probably a good idea to try and make it home. One of the girls had a bike and we strode off into the sunset together like I was 10 years old again in my neighborhood. She turned off into a little path through a rice field and I decided my day wasn’t quite over yet. I chased her through the field until I found myself parking underneath a great tiny stilted house. She introduced me to her brothers, mother and father and a sweet old grandmother. They were elated at my presence. I was soon presented with dinner, a blackened fish about the size of a large goldfish, rice, fried plantains, and a bowl with a chunk of ice in it. I loved it, and they were loving me loving it. I spoke to the family through my 8 year old translator for quite a bit longer and the rains started to pound the grass roof, first heavy, then heavier. They insisted that I stay the night and even began to clear thier only bed for me, but my friends would have killed me if I wouldn’t have returned tonight. So I started to leave and it was the cutest thing ever, but the grandmother fished through a little box and pulled out a crappy plastic yellow flashlight for my ride home. I was again loving it and wishing so badly I had another free day to visit, or at least return their flashlight. I took off into the night after the family walked me in the hard rain back to the main road. I got lost in the pitch dark dirt no mud roads and took nearly 3 hours to get back home. That little light even made it all the way back, a reminder of the small effort of hospitality that continued even after I left.
Why do we struggle with hospitality? I recently invited a hitchhiker to stay in our cozy shed. He is a nice man, about 50 or so, but kind of a talker. He has stayed in our shed numerous times, but I can’t help but be annoyed when I am trying to relax here in my home and he wishes to talk about this or that. I know he is lonely, I know from my own experience travelling alone. Unfortunetly tonight I had to ask him to leave after numerous nights spent here at the request of my roomate who is fearing he is making our place a semi-permanent residence. It is raining and I know he is camping out there somewhere. I can’t help but feel bad that I have a place to give and am unable to do it.
Perhaps we build up our homes as “ours”, it is our right to have our “own” space and we protect it dearly. We have routines and schedules not to be upset by others except those that are supposed to be here. We are often one huge campus of frat houses hosting private parties. Somebody’s bound to be left out. And somedays its you.
Somebody saved my ass, now I gotta save somebody else’s.
Thier is a reason we love controversy and drama, explosions and tears. It makes us finally feel life. It is the very reason the World Race appealed to me and a normal job, a normal life did not. I wanted struggle, obstacles and strife, I wanted to feel life both kick me and hug me. And whether we get our daily dose artifically through tv and movies, or those that dare to create thier own, whether good or bad, we need this struggle in order to awaken our souls.
“We just had a near life experience!” Fight Club’s Tyler Durden after flipping thier car over an embankment.
I originally wrote about this on my WR blog entitled “Four Strokes for Freedom”. I am rewriting it for more clarity.
Still in the excitement of the first month, we took a day off at beautiful Agua Azul. A series of widely tiered waterfalls that open into large pools perfect for escaping the heat. Upon arriving we saw a local boy cross a vicious path, the bottleneck of the bottom tier to climb upon the upper part and cliff jump. Well we just had to try that. Several people made the journey safely, nearly one got swept away into the tormented watery chute. I safely made it across though later got stuck in a hole on the top tier. Flip!
Candice and Chad later found out about the crossing point and wished to cross. I offered myself a guide, now as confident as the local boy that originally inspired our dance with watery misery. I explained the importance of being high on the curved rocks, as much water above the knees at that speed would immediatly sweep the participant away. We stuck candice in the middle and proceeded, myself in the back. I watched candice, always giggling, taking each step deeper and deeper. I instructed her to get up high, which she did by overcorrecting and the pressure brought her to her knees, she scraped and began to drag along and I like a bruce willis movie I jumped foreward and our hands caught at the last second. Her giggles were over, replaced with a panic. My own panic found me as my found out heroics were to be short lived. Now connected to a whole Candice under speeding water, I was drug into the danger zone and quickly realizing my fate. I jumped to meet her and we held the only thing solid, eachother. Eyes closed, every muscle locked we made our descent into the torment. Our journey allowed little time to think and only later did we match our wounds with the rocks along the horrid path. In the end I found a place of peace, not even the noise of the monster above could be heard, I gave four strokes up and found the surface neath a rock to the right of the end of the chute. While I was shot down, Candice was shot out. She surfaced 10 feet away and grasped a rock in the pool. We examined our injuries and found little bumps and bruises, plenty of bloody cuts and scrapes but for the most part we fared well. (Candice later had to have surgery in Nicaragua on her knee)
I wrote this to end my blog in what seems so long ago:
Waking up in my own watery way
I don´t claim myself a hero, not lucky, not stupid, nor a hero, nor a victim. God chose to usher me through this chute at this time. A lesson of the respect of nature. A parable of a spiritual life, taking an exhilarating beating. A showing of God´s grace and mercy in protecting us. I don´t expect to go jumping off a fatty cliff and expect God to turn me into a bird to fly away. Nor do I expect God to do anything for me while I sit on a couch and stick a fork into a salsberry steak tv dinner. There is a path in between here and there, that is both dangerous and good, nearer to life, nearer to who I want to be and who I am intended to be. This is the road I am looking for. This is the road I will take.
I go there, when you ask me about the world race. I smell those smells, I feel that hand still warm, I remember those words…I go there, those sharp moments.
I worry about snakes in the high grass, my eyes follow my steps, missing the oasis ahead. The kind you would expect a giraffe to soak his tongue in. Bent down, so awkward. Three days we had waited, rather they had waited, for us, the great white prophets, as we were to be named later that day. I peel my eyes from the snake hunt, and see the grass give way to the bare sand and several thatched huts. Another warm welcome, handshakes come standard even out here. “They need to prepare her” our translator says. Six chairs happily meet our drained bodies, as we sit and sip out of nalgenes awaiting what is to be next. So much silence for this many people, and indeed, many had collected in anticipation of our arrival. “The place is very small, you only can have three go in” our translator says, “Ginger, Kari and myself” I delegate and we wait.
Soon, she was allowed to lay back down, perhaps a days energy lost to the awkward sitting position. I begin to crawl out of the dark miserable hole, a last glance, through wet eyes, I see hers staring blankly at the wall where we were kneeling. I turn and light, warmth greet me.
That little box full of death out there in the mozambique bush ended up bringing out more life in me than I had ever felt. How fragile and blessed is this life and its oppurtunities.
